Posted
by
samzenpus
on Monday June 17, 2013 @09:35AM
from the name-recognition dept.

Loadmaster writes "The new Oddworld game New 'n' Tasty is coming to every platform in the current generation and even the next generation but not the Xbox One. It's not that developer Oddworld Inhabitants isn't porting the game. It's not that they hate Microsoft or the Xbox One. No, it's that Microsoft has taken an anti-indie dev stance with the Xbox One. While the game industry is moving to Kickstarter and self-funded shops, Microsoft has decided all developers must have a publisher to grace their console."

From this point of view (not allowing independent games) this is a very well reasoned observation.

Or maybe we can say

Xbone is a sinking ship, there is no salvage.

An ecosystem is done or killed by the software it delivers.
To be interesting for a publisher (or for a self-publshing aka "indie" developer) that ecosystem needs to have a big number of applications.
Take the iOS and Android ecosystems: they have been great for gaming[1] because they just brought software to millions of people, and publishing on either app store or google play wasn't ne

m$ have signalled what is unfortunately the end of gaming & our rights

If only there were an open platform with standardized, interchangeable hardware existing in a highly competitive ecosystem, your choice of operating system, and the ability to choose where you get your games and whether to participate in an online community.

wrote this post on our blog a few months ago to express how absolutely weird and unfortunate I thought it was that the trending perception of Microsoft and indies had gotten so bad that silly creative decisions of mine were being taken as Microsoft's ever-burgeoning evilness toward indies, or something. My message was this: we're indie, we make the games we want to make, Microsoft publishes them, and the past five years of this have been great, and it's too bad that that's not super newsworthy, because this whole time it just feels like I must watch, powerless, as Lumbergh keeps taking my red stapler.

Then Xbox One happened, and a longtime fan of ours posted this on my facebook wall:

Questionable grammar aside, I was super glad he posted this, because through no fault of his own he's unwittingly illustrated what happens when these narratives blow up. You know that thing about no self-publishing on Xbox One? The meaning of that quote was that the partner/publisher relationship is currently the same (i.e. what we, an indie studio, been doing for the last five years) but they're exploring ways to improve it. Basically "everything's the same, stay tuned for improvements" mutated into "no indies on Xbox One, ever" in a few hours.

Finally, a disclaimer: I do not think there is a vast conspiracy to unjustly villify Microsoft. That would be weird, possibly an indicator of neurosis, even. I just wish I could add my "everything is fine" experience to the mix more often.

And with that, here's the original post:

In Charlie Murder, the whole band gets Windows Phones on the fictional t2f (short for ta2fön) network. There’s a bunch of stuff you can use your phone for, like email (some of it rote, some of it interesting), camera phone, and squid-themed microblogging site squ.iddl.us. I thought it was a fun way to give your characters a bit of an info hub, and I’ve been a big fan of Windows Phone ever since my Samsung Focus and its marvelous bulging battery bomb (that’s another story). Also, we have a game on Windows Phone, and we definitely make a buck or two whenever someone buys it, so that’s cool. Yet still, I felt the need to tweet this:

In the comments in Joystiq’s rad Charlie Murder preview write up, there were a few begrudging Microsoft for what was (erroneously) interpreted as some sort of paid off order from up high to include the phone in the game. This is obviously entirely untrue; if anyone’s guilty of some sort of slimy promotion, I guess that would be me, as I’d like to get more people interested in a pretty solid other alternative to iPhone (and, again, we’ve got Z0MB1ES on dat ph0ne!!!1)

But I think this illuminates an underlying issue, namely that of Microsoft’s misunderstood role as indie games publisher, and how that ties to the trending media narrative on Microsoft being “bad for indies.” Where do we stand on all this? Read on:

So, Microsoft is publishing Charlie Murder. What does that mean? Here are a few facts to set the record straight:We have full creative control. This is our game. 100% of the (non-localized) content in Charlie Murder was made by Michelle and me, or, in a few cases, by a few gaming celebrities who we got some rad cameos from (yes, celebrities).Ska Studios is just Michelle and me. We work in our basement. We have two cats (you knew that).Microsoft gives us localized text from our English text, finds bugs, tells us how to fix bugs when we’re stumped, tells us how close to passing cert we are, and takes us out to din

or are they not really an Indie anymore, are they? I kept reading the phrase "published by Microsoft" and I get the sense that this bloke now has Microsoft publishing his games. That's great if you won the pot last gen when XBLA was free to all comers, but what if you're just getting started? Or did I miss something? If this guy really doesn't have a publisher then he won't be making XBox One games. If Microsoft will act as his publisher that's great for him, but it still leaves real "Independent" game devs

I found this story puzzling, I would have expected Sony to do this rather than Microsoft. The fight against "piracy" is the fight against indie media, since the indies use the internet to get the word out and the mainstream monsters don't need it.

Nobody ever lost a dime to noncommercial infringement, but many great artists have starved from obscurity (very good example being Van Gogh, who only sold one painting for ten bucks in today's money, to his brother, to pay a debt). The fight against "piracy" is a f

This pisses me off, as a former Sony victim I want that company to die horribly. Come on, Sony, follow Microsoft's lead and let Nintendo have the game business!

This is nothing but a display of ignorance. Sony did lot's of bad things in the past indeed, but they're are under the new leadership(Kaz Hirai) since Q1 last year and since them they've been doing quite a lot great things. Open source android projects, semi-open game platforms, restructure of the company and product lines and removal of incompetent staff just to name a few. To demonize the whole company because the poor choices of a few is just not fair.
By the way, your beloved Nintendo has a fair shar

This is just Microsoft protecting their own turf. This is part of their culture. As a publisher they feel they must prevent anything that might jeopardize that income. Most companies would not go this far, but Microsoft has a culture of "cutting off their nose to spite their face."

Wow, I thought the negatives for Xbox One couldn't be any more before it got launched. Did Sony get a leak of Microsoft's plans and then decide to do the opposite? 1) Make PS4 cheaper, 2) Not require constant internet connection, 3) Allow used games, 4) Push for indie games [polygon.com].

OtherOS was a feature available in early versions of the PlayStation 3 video game console that allowed other operating systems, such as Linux or FreeBSD, to be installed on the system. This feature was made unavailable in newer models and removed from the oldest ones through a firmware update by Sony.

I thought they were totally upfront about it. They removed the feature from new units and told the folks on the old ones to not update. Sure it sucks, but nothing like being a total cockbag from the word go the way MS is being.

It was a promised feature that was removed later - would some of the people who purchased it have dropped that $$$ if they knew that, even at some point in the future, they'd have to make a choice between running Linux or playing online? I know I wouldn't have, if Linux were part of the draw to a PS3 (too pricey for me tbh). Besides, their track record isn't great, and it'll be worth it to watch both of these companies after launch... just wait and see.

It was a promised feature that was removed later - would some of the people who purchased it have dropped that $$$ if they knew that, even at some point in the future, they'd have to make a choice between running Linux or playing online? I know I wouldn't have, if Linux were part of the draw to a PS3 (too pricey for me tbh). Besides, their track record isn't great, and it'll be worth it to watch both of these companies after launch... just wait and see.

They made some unfortunate choices, but "changing their mind" is the prerogative you gave them when you bought their proprietary hardware/only-as-open-as-we-say-it-can-be model in the first place. I'm sure it was disappointing, but how old are you that you really weren't expecting that ability to be taken away?

"Changing your mind" after customers purchase your hardware = "lying". I'm 37, and I wasn't expecting that feature to be taken away. I'm not buying a PS4 partially because of that - and the rootkits, and their incredibly poor response and questionable statements related to the PSN hack.

(Side note: this is quite possibly why Sony isn't doing the online thing; it isn't being gamer-friendly, its them remembering their network was unusable for 3-4 weeks.)

That's the problem with continued updates... it allows the manufacturer to bait-and-switch legally. What they did with the PS3 is exactly the same as an auto manufacturer removing four-wheel-drive from your vehicle after you bought it, or a radio manufacturer disabling the cassette deck, or TV manufacturer disabling USB ports, or any number of similar examples that could be made.

So you would have choosed the XBox 360 instead?Or would you have held out as the pro gamer you are for the Wii?The other OS thing was shitty. I agree. It was not a lie though and I still would have picked up the PS3 had I knew about this ahead of time.

Disclaimer: We are selling it as X, Y and Z in perpetuity, but in a few years it's going to be only X and Y, and then just X a few years after that. Or X and Z. And eventually X* (because some of X won't be compatible without Y) and Z.

So. While Sony acted stupidly, anyone with any honesty that followed what happened knows that it was neither a lie nor was it "Bait and Switch".

How the hell is that not both lying and bait and switch!?!?

AFAICT, Other OS was an advertised feature right on the front of the box, and there was no mention that it was a temporary feature, nor was there any mention that they planned on disabling it. There was probably some "we can do anything we want with future system updates" type of verbage in the click through license, but all licenses have that, and no one with any honesty would claim that removing a widely advertised feature with an OS update is something that one should expect.

If they had instead removed the abilty to play PS3 games with an OS update that could not be rolled back, would you honestly be saying the same thing? What about blu ray movies? Since it's "primarily" a game machine (as the common argument goes), removing the ability to play blu rays would be on equal footing with removing Other OS, correct? Doing so would leave people with the choice of either:a) having a PS3 that only plays blu rays and no new games and all online aspects of existing games would cease to functionb) having a PS3 that only plays games, but no longer plays blu rays

That's what it boiled down to, just with Other OS instead. That's deceitful behavior. It's bait and switch. The product isn't just one thing or the other. The product was sold as a sum of its features, and they neutered it.

An argument can be made that by saying it would have that capability and taking it away the original statement was a lie. You have a valid point in that they were pretty upfront with things when they took it away. So they were very honest about when they decided to make their original statement a lie.

Sony advertised that those PS3s came with OtherOS. They did not advertise those PS3s come with OtherOS as long as you have no interest in playing new games or enjoying new features on your console, especially when those features and games have no conflict whatsoever with OtherOS.

It's like a dealership warranty requiring oil changes at the dealership (I know that's only the case for extended warranties now) and after the 12th oil change they rip out the radio (but they were nice enough to tell you that they'd do that the day you bring your car in for the 12th oil change). They lied because the radio was part of the car and nowhere in the warranty does it say you'll have the radio ripped out on the 12th oil change.

Lying by omission is still lying.

Let's also not forget about the rootkit, which was as obvious of a lie as any.

How can I put this to you? Sony removed a feature which provided a platform for compromising the DRM of the system (Illegal in the US and many other countries I might add). They had a fiduciary duty to remove that feature and were perfectly in their legal right to do so.

This may rub you the wrong way. I am a Playstation die-hard and even I understand why OtherOS could no longer be permitted. Sony didn't do this because they were greedy, or because they hate linux, or because they are evil. They did

Sony also made new PS3 disc games require Other OS-incompatible firmware, which defeated the purpose of Other OS which was to have Linux and games on one device. If people knew that they'd have to keep one PS3 for Other OS and buy a second PS3 for playing new games, they would have bought a PC instead in the first place.

First Sony said a couple of months before the Other OS removal they wouldn't be removing it. Then on an April 1st release they removed it. Everyone just thought it was a joke until it was too late for a lot of people. Sony made it MANDATORY because you either had to update and lose the Other OS feature, or you couldn't use the console to connect to PSN (meaning you lost access to any games you bought online), play newer bluRays or newer games. Either way, doing the update or not, you lost something you bought the console to do.

As I've said probably a dozen times in the last few weeks. My console was updated, not by me, when I had some people over to watch a RENTED movie. The movie required a BluRay update, which updated the console.

Sony was not up front about removing the Other OS, they lied about it profusely and tried to trick, and ultimately forced, PS3 owners to update. Linux was an awesome feature to have on my PS3 and I did a lot of stuff with it, but anyone that didn't update is now stuck with an overpriced ($800 when I bought mine), under powered, locked down Linux machine.

And you are stupid as hell by defending a corporation as if you were a shareholder. Sony screwed people back then and that's fact. Learn to deal with it and be thankful that you didn't get burned. Some people refuse to buy Dodge Caravans after their door glass broke on them and you cannot easily forget something like that. This is what serves companies to stick to honest business practices if they want to keep getting repeated sales.

Besides, with the PS4 charging money for online access, the choice is very

173w ago - Update: Sony's Geoff Levand has now confirmed, to quote: "SCE is committed to continue the support for previously sold models that have the 'Install Other OS' feature and that this feature will not be disabled in future firmware releases."

You can try and spin it anyway you like, but the fact was it was an advertised feature. I bought my Console on launch day, If it wasn't an advertised feature then I wouldn't have known about it and it wouldn't have been the deciding factor in choosing the PS3 over the XBox 360.

Also Other OS was removed in version 3.21 of the firmware, so you're still wrong.

They removed the feature from new units and told the folks on the old ones to not update.

Yes, those are the words they used, but actual implications of those words was a lot worse than 'You won't get a bugfix for Red's Raiders game'.

The reason you are sworn to tell the whole truth, and not only the truth.

So the whole truth of that statement would be: "Don't update, and never again connect to our network. Also, your PS3 is now a sub-PS3 and you are forbidden from playing any new game released from this point forward*."

"*Also, post a guard on your couch to prevent anyone from ever clicking through the text when they pop in a game or movie. Because that's going to be an irrevocable update applied to your hardware with no recourse to you. Sure, you could go out and buy an entire new PS3... but we altered the HW of the PS3 so you lose your backward compatability as well."

The support is not what I care about, but I have to choose whether I want to keep that feature (which I did) or still be able to use the console for gaming (which I'm not). So true, my original statement was slightly wrong, it should have been something like:

They sold a product with features X and Y, then went "nah, you can't really have both" (i.e. other OS, PSN).

Micrsoft has a long history of using the "Queen's duck" strategy to pretend they're listening to their customers. After a suitable pause, Microsoft will grandly and magnanimously agree to allow users and developers some token feedom while reserving the option to continue screwing everyone who deals with them.

They'll have their social media reputation managers pulling out all stops to sell the pre-planned reversion as a "customers have spoken" moment, when it's really anything but

Microsoft has a culture of "cutting off their nose to spite their face."

No they don't they are simply the same bullying Abusive Monopoly they always are. There technique is abusive compromise...with the users doing all the compromising. They start with being over-reaching...and then step back ( a little) when users revolt, and repeat at the next iteration. IT has been incredibly successful at slowly eroding users rites.

You might want to look up your terms. MS is not anywhere near a monopoly on consoles. They have about a 30% market share, same as Sony. Nintendo has about a 40% share. This is for consoles, MS has no handheld.

So sorry, but you can't whine about monopoly here, because MS hasn't got one. They are only one player of three, and not the big one. That is not to say this is a smart move (it isn't) but this isn't some case of a big monopoly throwing their weight around. You aren't a monopoly unless you have total o

As a publisher they feel they must prevent anything that might jeopardize that income. Most companies would not go this far, but Microsoft has a culture of "cutting off their nose to spite their face."

Actually, that USED to be Sony's reputation. In the console space at least, MS once had a very positive reputation. Lately though, the attitudes seem to have completely reversed. MS has become the arrogant, control-freak pricks and Sony is actually looking like the decent, pro-consumer company. Just bizarre.

Sony has to do well with PS4 or their console dreams are over. Microsoft is doing very well with the 360 and thinks they are on top of the world. This means Sony is pulling out all the stops to get converts. Microsoft thinks they can be as dickish as they like and keep enough customers. Sony has done this in the past when they were on top.

You would think that console companies would have learned by now that being on top in one-generation and getting cocky about it is the sure road to getting your ass kicked in the next generation. Just ask Atari, Nintendo, and Sony. Nothing spells doom in the console world quite like a "We're on top now, so we can do anything we want!" attitude.

One of the main issue with "consoles" is that it really is controled by a bunch of sociopath focusing on how to put the maximum of toll boths to efficiently bleed the marcs..

Under the pretext of make the experience "safe", you need the get some sort of "authorisations" from the console makers, and now it seems that Microsoft feels strong (or is weak) enough to add an additional hurdle to avoid "wasting their time" with the unwashed masses.

I hope that "android" consoles become popular (and that it will not end up with Google doing exactly the same thing M$ is doing....

I original poster was making the point that their are a few Android consoles about, as an alternative...I believe Mad Catz (yes that one) is about to add to the already popular Android console market.

iOS does not have a gaming console, as Steve Jobs was pretty anti-games. There was a rumour about them buying Nintendo which I suspect would have been an incredible match. Instead they spent their time making criminal deals with book publishers.

Jobs wasn't anti-games. You seem to have forgotten that speech where he was introducing some action games to OSX by way of Activision among others. Hell, the guy started his computing career in Atari by programming games.

You seem to have a strong dislike of Apple that makes you say random and crazy statements about the company. It's not like they haven't been convicted of anything yet regarding the book trial and your comment about the AppleTV just goes to show that you just hate them because they are not d

Jobs wasn't anti-games. You seem to have forgotten that speech where he was introducing some action games to OSX by way of Activision among others. Hell, the guy started his computing career in Atari by programming games.

If Seve Jobs wasn't anti-games(he was they weren't premium)...Steve Jobs was simply a failure at the gaming market. Apple is a barren wasteland when it comes to gaming...OpenGL was left to rot, and even with a massive hole in the PC gaming market with Microsoft pretty much shitting on PC gaming since the launch of the initial XBox, Apple has become increasingly more desperate to compete...thank god for Microsoft pushing stream onto Linux and Apple.

Minecraft got a special sweetheart deal from Microsoft that throws most of the indie restrictions out the window. They also don't have to pay to post patches, unlike others (who pay tens of thousands of dollars, something no other platform is doing to indies anymore).

Microsoft's idea of "supporting indie games" is to find ones that got mainstream already and exempt them from the rules. Which is a sure sign that the rules are crap, but you know. This is Microsoft we're talking about.

If this were Reddit, I'd be asking for AWildSketchAppears to draw a plane crashing and burning into a train wreck because the pilot shot out the tires while simultaneously trying to insert his head up his own ass.

Why don't you crawl over to that lame site and find out? I've had it with Reddit hipsters. Reddit is like a Down Syndrome convention.

Failure to capitalise the start of a sentence, failure to use an apostrophe in contractions, failure to capitalise proper nouns, failure to end a sentence with a full stop. Failure seems to be a common occurrence for you.

They been making so many bad moves in the last few years, I'm beginning to think this is some elaborate game to intentionally run the company off a cliff. Surely to god, they can't be doing all this dumb shit and actually thinking it's smart. Can they?

There is a tendency in corporate culture to drink the kool aid the top is serving. Take SGI. Perfect example. They had no clear strategy a bit over a decade ago and I outright confronted one of their sales reps about it and asked him why I should buy their products when I knew IBM would be around 10 years from now. He gave me some bullshit response that SGI had solid products and platforms and they were out of business less than a year later. If someone in the company had just said "We don't have a clear strategy and are going to get crushed by Sun and IBM if we don't develop one," a couple years earlier, they might have been able to pull it out. They did have some things they actually did better than other companies, they just chose to throw all that away and try to pursue the same course IBM and Sun were. Even Sun couldn't pull THAT shit off.

So maybe Microsoft DOES actually believe, in their isolated corporate culture, that their platform is strong enough to get away with the shit they're trying to pull. Gamers have no loyalty and everyone has already decided to jettison them. Some people are changing consoles, some people are going to PC gaming. Microsoft could save itself a lot of money and just scrap the entire Xbox line right now. If Sony offered an easy path for indie developers, the Xbox developer landscape would be a barren wasteland within a year.

and some misguided attempt to imitate Steve Jobs' "Screw the consumer, we'll tell them what they want!" attitude (but missing the fact that Jobs had a virtual cult that would follow him anywhere).

And also missing the fact that Jobs, love him or hate him (and I'm not a fanboy--I don't own even a single piece of Apple gear), was a genius with an uncanny feel for what would sell. It's too soon to tell, but Apple may be at the beginning of finding out what happens when you pursue that strategy without that kind of genius.

I really, really don't understand what the people at Microsoft are thinking. Ever. They go about things in two ways - they either start off with a terrible product and keep it that way, or they start off with something decent (Windows 95, Xbox [original]), make it better (XP, 360), and then shoot themselves in the ass (ME/Vista/8, Xbox One).

It stinks too, I enjoy my 360 and, even with the Gold membership fees, I'm pretty sure I'm still under the cost of a PS3, however the PS4 or Wii U are my ONLY options in this next round of console purchasing. I'll be happy to let my 360 gather dust and not worry about all the crap M$ is trying to shove down our throats. The Microsoft cocktail:

Brian Provinciano held a great presentation at GDC2013 about writing and releasing Retro City Rampage. Required watching/reading. One Man, 17 SKUs: Shipping on Every Platform at Once [gamasutra.com]. He does not have many good things to say about working with MS on the XBox Live version.

The article tells you Oddworld:New and Tasty needs an official publisher to release on XBox, it tells you that Oddworld creator Lorne Lanning doesn't want to get a publisher, and it tells you why he doesn't want to get a publisher (he doesn't want to split the revenue), but it doesn't tell you Oddworld Interactive doesn't count as a publisher.

They clearly don't meet some requirement. Is the requirement stupid and obsolete (ie: the ability to ship boxed games), or is it reasonable (ie: the ability to correctly charge sales tax/VAT)? If it's not reasonable is it trivial?

Set up a company called AAA Publishing. Problem solved. "You want a publisher? Fine. Here's our publisher. It's a freak coincidence that the president and CEO of our publishing company share the names of the president and CEO of our development company. Small world, I guess."

Maybe Microsoft still doesn't get this Internet thing. But most of the functions performed by a classical (print or physical media) publisher aren't needed for pure digital content. Put it on a web site or app store and you're done. Publishers have very little value in a world with zero distribution costs and viral marketing.

'Publishing' as a gatekeeper for media distribution is also the last holdout of market manipulators and organized crime. Is this what Microsoft wants?

No but this article [gamesindustry.biz] says the Indie section is going away:

Yesterday, Microsoft's Studios corporate vice president Phil Harrison told Eurogamer that the marketplace on the company's new Xbox One console would combine retail games, Xbox Live Arcade, and Xbox Live Indie Games into a single section. . . With the Indie Games section going away, that means developers are stuck with the standard Xbox publishing rules.

So yes, indie games will need a publisher which sorta not makes them indie anymore. This might be a misunderstanding but Oddworld seems to think they are being forced to use a publisher. MS might have to clarify this point. There is a need for a publisher in games mostly for funding; however, Oddworld is self-funded. They don't feel like sharing revenue and profits when they don't have to share.

I'm giving MS the benefit of a doubt. They may not have all the details right and is still working them out. Their messaging also has not been very good lately so one group might be saying one thing and another group saying another.

Can someone explain the definition of a "publisher?" Why can't Oddworld Inhabitants simply state that they ARE a publisher or create Oddworld Publishing as a separate, wholly-owned company? The latter might be a little bit of a paperwork drill but incorporation really isn't that difficult. Is there a list of certified publishers that MS uses or something?

I think it's more than a simple declaration. Publishers are responsible for manufacturing, marketing, advertising, etc. Indie normally don't do this because of staff size, expertise, etc.

MS used to have XNA, and basically let anyone publish on the 360 with just a $100 a year license. Not sure why they abandoned such a forward-thinking program. But it does fit in with the general MS stance of making every fucking wrong move imaginable over the last 3-4 years, and scrapping every decent idea they ever had.

Sometimes I think Blamer has secretly gone nuts, and no one has the balls to have him committed. It would certainly explain why he's absent from MS public events these days. But at least Howard Hughes was smart enough to delegate well after *he* went batshit. Balmer, by contrast, seems determined to not only collect all his urine in jars, but also to run his company off the cliff.

Did XNA include the rights to publish patches?My understanding was they charged far out the ass for that and it lead to many games staying broken since not even big companies wanted to pay to fix already sold games.

No, it didn't. There seems to be some confusion in this thread. The patch publishing fee was for XBox Live Arcade or retail games.

I think the reason Microsoft has ditched indie games is that they turned it into a failure themselves.

All the really really good indie games got given full Live Arcade publishing rights by Microsoft. XNA ran on a version of the.NET CLR but Microsoft ended up creating an implementation of it that worked for Live Arcade games and a simple API that extended XNA to allow for achievements and so forth so that indie games could be ported to Live Arcade extremely trivially.

The net result was that the only thing that ended up in indie games was complete and utter shit and as such it wont have made Microsoft even close to the amount of money required to maintain it and to maintain XNA too, hence what is I suspect the whole reason XNA has been EOL'd for a while and indie games is going too on the new XBox. It wasn't helped by the fact that in one of the dashboard updates Microsoft hid indie games so far out the way in the menus few people found it.

But what's stupid is that Microsoft seem to have forgotten that even though it wasn't profitable in itself it was still the catalyst for the creation of all those games that got turned into fully fledged Live Arcade titles.

I suspect someone from finance has looked at the balance sheet and seen that indie games/XNA wasn't profitable in itself without having even the slightest understanding of how important it was for driving XBox Live Arcade revenues. Had those Live Arcade revenues from games ported from Indie games to Live Arcade been attributed to Indie rather than Live Arcade I'd wager it was profitable, just not on paper.

There's still five months before the consoles' release. One segment of the market (non-gaming parents who will be giving consoles for birthdays/Christmas) has no idea any of this is going on and they wouldn't understand it regardless. As for the rest, I don't really trust the gaming community to be able to sustain this level of vitriol and/or fanboism for that long.

All Microsoft needs to do is ditch everything they said at E3 and start over. Not fixing the problems, but presenting the situation properly.